Elis Close Day One in Sixth at Heps

PHILADELPHIA – The Yale men's track and field began competition on Saturday at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships hosted by Penn. The day was mostly devoted to preliminaries in the running events, with only a handful of finals. The Bulldogs currently sit in sixth place with six points thanks to junior Mike Levine's third-place result in the hammer throw. Princeton leads the pack with 52 points.

Levine, who will defend his conference title in the discus tomorrow, threw for a distance of 58.11m (190'08"), .60m short of the PR he hit last weekend. He was bested only by Princeton's US Olympic Trials qualifier Conor McCullough and Harvard's Ben Glauser.

Sophomore Paul Chandler equaled his personal best in the pole vault with a leap of 4.65m (15'03"). Despite clearing the same height as the fourth-place finisher, Chandler fell to eighth place on the basis of faults.

In other field events, sophomore Clifford Van Meter took 11th in the javelin throw (48.13m – 157'11") and junior Tommy Winger did the same in the long jump (6.15m – 20'02.5").

Senior Matthew Bieszard was the Elis' star on the track, qualifying for the finals in two events. The team captain was the top overall qualifier in the 400-meter dash, recording a PR of 47.93 and setting up a rematch tomorrow against Harvard's Tom Hopkins. Hopkins narrowly edged out Bieszard for the win at indoor Heps two months ago. Bieszard also won his heat in the 200-meter dash (22.07) and qualified in fourth overall – right behind Hopkins.

Sophomore Daniel Jones had a near miss in the 100-meter dash, finishing one spot away from qualifying in ninth. Jones ran a personal record of 10.89, and was .05 seconds behind away from nabbing the eighth spot. Freshman Daniel Kemp was 11th in the 110-meter high hurdles (15.73).

In a stacked field in the 800-meter run, the top thirteen finishers all came in ahead of the IC4A qualifying standard. Sophomore James Shirvell was the last to do so, with a PR of 1:51.14. Senior Charlie Jaeger was 22nd in 1:54.00.

Senior Julian Sheinbaum was the Bulldogs' highlight in the 1500-meter run, posting an impressive time (13th – 3:55.35) in only his second race since January and likely the last of his Yale career. Freshman Jacob Sandry was right behind (14th – 3:57.66).

In the only running final of the day, juniors Matthew Thwaites (31:05.30) and Kevin Lunn (31:18.56) placed 12th and 15th, respectively, in the 10,000-meter run. Both will compete in the same race at next week's IC4A Championships.

Competition resumes tomorrow in the field events at 11:00 a.m. and in the running events at 11:50 a.m and the final gun goes off at 4:30 p.m. Full results will be listed on www.yalebulldogs.com.